Nicholas Bergh

Biography

Nicholas Bergh has been working in the field of sound preservation and restoration for nearly 30 years. He received his BA and MA in Ethnomusicology from UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, where he specialized in the history of recording technology and sound archiving. During this time, he also worked as a sound restoration engineer and was fortunate to be mentored by engineers who had worked during the earliest decades of optical sound, disc, and magnetic technologies. In 2003, he started Endpoint Audio Labs with the aim of improving the quality of sound transfers before restoration.

Endpoint has become known for both its unique transfer technologies, as well as its use of

historical research to inform transfer decisions. The company has been instrumental in the preservation of some of the most precious studio and public archive sound elements. Film projects it has been involved in range from the earliest Vitaphone discs, through nitrate push–pull optical masters, to hundreds of tent-pole film titles such as The Sound of Music (1965) and Titanic (1997). Endpoint also provides sound supervision and sound mixing expertise to present-day film documentary projects where the use of historical material is required.

In recent years, Nicholas has been actively helping other institutions improve preservation sound quality, by developing a unique range of archival audio equipment. This equipment is now being used at some of the most demanding archives around the World, including: the Library of Congress, Washington, DC; the British Library in London; and the National Film and

Sound Archive of Australia, Canberra. Nicholas is a member of the Film Academy’s Production and Technology Branch, and is active in both the Academy’s Digital Preservation initiatives, as well as being a member of the Sci-Tech Council Historical Subcommittee. He is also active in the archival technical committees of AES, ARSC, and IASA.